I’ve never read a Marian Keyes book before and I have it on good authority that this was not one of her best. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book as a fun page-turner.
The subject matter was not immediately evident as light reading. Stella Sweeney is a beauty therapist and mother of two teenage children randomly struck down by a rare neurological condition which renders her temporarily completely paralysed retaining only her ability to blink and reliant on a ventilator. Although she has been told that she will regain normal movement eventually, She has to listen to the extreme pressure her condition is putting on her family without offering any kind of comfort.
She is given some respite in the form of an energetic doctor who schools her in communicating by blinking.
The strange intimacy which develops between doctor and silent patient would have been enough to sustain the narrative and I thought it would. However, the story then jumps through a number of twists that are perhaps a little implausible but good fun nonetheless.
There is an important story in the life of those “locked in” but this is not the book to truly draw on that. If you are looking for insights on the internal life then I would suggest you read The Butterfly and the Diving Bell.
